ad
been taken to render their habitation not merely respectable and
commodious, but even dignified and imposing.

It was situated about four hundred yards from the village, and on a
rising ground which sloped gently upward, covered with small enclosures,
or closes, laid out irregularly, so that the old oaks and elms, which
were planted in hedge-rows, fell into perspective, and were blended
together in beautiful irregularity. When they approached nearer to the
house, a handsome gateway admitted them into a lawn, of narrow dimensions
indeed, but which was interspersed with large sweet chestnut trees and
beeches, and kept in handsome order. The front of the house was
irregular. Part of it seemed very old, and had, in fact, been the
residence of the incumbent in Romish times. Successive occupants had made
considerable additions and improvements, each in the taste of his own
age, and without much regard to symmetry. But these incongruities of
architecture were so graduated and happily mingled, that the eye, far
from being displeased with the combinations of various styles, saw
nothing but what was interesting in the varied and intricate pile which
they displayed. Fruit-trees displayed on the southern wall, outer
staircases, various places of entrance, a combination of roofs and
chimneys of different ages, united to render the front, not indeed
beautiful or grand, but intricate, perplexed, or, to use Mr. Price's
appropriate phrase, picturesque. The most considerable addition was that
of the present Rector, who, "being a bookish man," as the beadle was at
the pains to inform Jeanie, to augment, perhaps, her reverence for the
person before whom she was to appear, had built a handsome library and
parlour, and no less than two additional bedrooms.

"Mony men would hae scrupled such expense," continued the parochial
officer, "seeing as the living mun go as it pleases Sir Edmund to will
it; but his Reverence has a canny bit land of his own, and need not look
on two sides of a penny."

Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and
commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own
country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the
devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment,
strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and
pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the
present incumbent, and, despite